Everyone for Miles Around is Offended

And then there’s the tragic clash of world views (or Weltanschauungen as we call them in old Stuttgart) between the Gay Police Association and ‘Christians’ i.e. some Christians.

An advert placed by the Gay Police Association (GPA) that claimed a 74 per cent rise in homophobic incidents due to religious belief has caused widespread offence among Christians…The GPA advert has also prompted a police investigation. The Metropolitan Police says the inquiry “centres on whether the advert constitutes a faith crime”.

A – what? A what crime? A faith what? I know about the religious hatred bill and all, but so do you guys now have something called a ‘faith crime’ that the police investigate? Seriously? For real? Isn’t that just a little…alarming? Isn’t that like Rowan Atkinson’s and Salman Rushdie’s worst nightmare come true true true? Are you all sure you’ve panicked enough?

“The suggestion is that if you get rid of faith, you get rid of homophobic attacks,” believes the Reverend George Hargreaves, leader of the Christian Party, who also sits on a number of Metropolitan Police committees and steering groups. “I believe this whole matter has left us with evidence that the Gay Police Association is Christianaphobic, and I therefore think an investigation is the right course of action. I also believe that the chairman of the Gay Police Association, Paul Cahill, should resign.”

Other than that, of course, the Rev George is as liberal and broad-minded a fella as you’d want to meet – all he wants is for the police to investigate ‘Christianophobia’ and for somebody to resign (as chairman? as cop? he doesn’t say). Modesty itself.

The Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship (LCF) is among the faith-based organisations that are questioning the rise in incidents that the advert refers to…”The incidents need not be criminal offences and may be lawful expressions of opinion, such as an opinion that adoption by gay couples constitutes a risk to the welfare of children.”

Uh…or such as that the Bible fosters homophobia – that kind of expression of opinion. So if yours isn’t theirs isn’t, and if theirs is yours is. You don’t get to make it that yours isn’t but theirs is. Nuh uh.

Cahill says the purpose of the advert was not to cause offence, but to raise awareness…Among other people who were offended by the advert was Dr John Dubbey of Norwich, who believes proof is required to back up the GPA’s statistics.

Come on, Cahill, you know nobody cares what the intent is; if offence occurs, then it is offence, and people are offended, and intent to raise awareness is entirely beside the point. It’s a faith crime to offend people. Like Dr John Dubbey of Norwich. Dr John Dubbey of Norwich is offended – along with other people. People were offended, Cahill, don’t you understand? Offended! They were offended! And there you are swanning around talking about awareness. You should not only resign, you should go on a pilgrimage to someplace nasty and rub dirt on your head.

Meanwhile, J Hale of Sutton says: “We were horrified when we saw a copy of the advert. It does not take into consideration my human rights to religious freedom and to freedom of conscience as a Christian. It is an affront to what I believe in to see the mockery behind the portrayal of the Holy Bible and, presumably, the blood of Jesus Christ, and the words that accompany it.”

Um – who’s J Hale of Sutton, and who cares what it says, and why? And who’s ‘we’? And where did J Hale say all this, and to whom, and when, and why? And why is the Indy collecting what it says? Besides – Sutton – I ask you. Who cares what people in Sutton think?

I’d have been more impressed by the GPA if the image used had been a pool of blood next to a Koran.

Then we could have enjoyed the whole spectacle of outraged speeches in Parliament, aggressive questioning of Government ministers, leading aricles in the Guardian and Independent, riots on the ‘muslim ‘ street around the world and maybe a grovelling apology from the head of the Met.

In practice, as it is not a driving or parking offence, the ‘offence’ will be carefully and slowly reviewed with the paperwork then filed under ‘waste of time’.

If I was running the GPA press office I’d get straight onto collating and publishing stats about faith inspired assaults on gay christians, then sock it right back at the bigotts. As corporal Jones said, they don’t like it up ’em.

OB Sutton is actually not that far from Tunbridge Wells. I hope this helps.

Apparently the GPA considered using the Koran, but chose the bible on the grounds that the large majority of faith-inspired homophobic incidents involved christians – although there was a higher proportion of incidents involving moslems. That doesn’t rule out a failure of nerve over using the koran, of course.

However, the actual data doesn’t seem to be available and the definition of a religiously inspired incident seems vague. I’d be a lot happier with some real numbers.

If the ad reflects reality, then surely Mr Hale et al should be more affronted by the actions of their apparent co-religionists than by those pointing it out.

Oh crap. None of this would ever happen here in the states. Maybe it’s because the Christians are the only game in town, so they don’t need to amp-up their martyr status against another band of godbothering twits.

Xians in the USofA do cry martyr all the freakin’ time, they are not in competition with anyone for #1 Martyr like in the UK, where Christian-o-phobia and Ismal-o-phobia runs rampant. Over here, Xians are the only self-described oppressed majority group.

Every so often here some Xian group gets in a tizzy about being oppressed, but that pretty much only happens when they get caught doing something unconstitutional. If a court tells them to stop teaching make-believe to kids, or to remove the bible from a court, they become two-years old kids. (It’s a terrific fund-raising tool.)

The War Against XMas was a media farce. O’Reilly yelled about it every day and made it popular, but no one took him seriously. Most of the country was numb from standing in line at shopping malls and had lost the will to care about it. Oh yeah, and half of the examples he cited day after day were false, and once that caught up with him, it died out.

This seems really freaky to me. Gays are genuinely murdered in all countries, and this is called ‘gay-hate murder’ even by criminologists. But the evidence that the murderers are acting on religious impulses as CHRISTIANS is about zero. Most of it is twisted masculine honor and threatened sxual identity.

If you can find me a Christian pastor who preaches either freelance, or state-sponsored murder of gays I will be a little surprised.

If you CANNOT find a Muslim ‘spiritual leader’ who preaches that I will be astonished.

The GPA seems to be creating a huge category error. Open disapproval and free speech are given the same name as barbarous and cruel murder.

Bad ideas do kill. THis pathetic nonsense diverts attention from killers to attack the ideological opponent.

But the point isn’t that Christian pastors preach murder, but that they preach hatred. This is the place where free speech absolutism hits a wall – on the one hand, sure, preaching hatred is a kind of speech and arguably ought to be protected, but on the other hand, hatred really can and really does lead to violence and murder, which makes the idea that preaching hatred ought to be protected – tricky.

Free speech absolutists tend to rely on flat and unsupported assertions that hatred simply never does lead to murder; that hate speech never does cause physical harm or death. But why should we believe that? If people who beat up or kill gays don’t do it because they hate them, then why do they do it? (Because they are threatened, etc – yes but why are they threatened etc? Because they’ve been taught to be. It’s not innate.)

Yes, true enough that I am not in America. And in talking to US gun rights supporters I am occasionally surprised by their hard line.

But the churches I attend do leadership exchanges and conferences with American churches, and the books and courses we see are often sourced from the UK and USA, and I have friends and family who have lived and worshipped in the States. Also I once read an issue of Time, so I know almost everything! I think I am fairly aware of the mainstream (or mainstreams) coming from US churches. I watch out for the nuttier stuff because of my allergy to irrationality like creation science.

I think just as you are not going to find Democratic Party branches sponsoring assaults or murders of Republican candidates you do not find churches sponsoring harassment, assaults or murders of gays. It just is not within the normal range of church-sponsored activities.

Forgive me if I seem obtuse and patronising, but this has been my only objection to the excellent focus of yourself and B&W; that after defending rationality from the attacks of irrationalists, you go on to speak as though the worst extremes of self-righteous stupidity are in some way the norm. I could be wrong, but it doesn’t sound like the people I know.